15
Jun

How Government Expropriated Employment Insurance from Canadian Workers and Employers and Why This Matters

In the latest paper from the Mowat Centre, University of Victoria’s Donna Wood — one of Canada’s foremost experts on EI — argues that Canada’s employment insurance system has in effect been expropriated by the federal government at the expense of workers and employers.Read More

01
Jun

The complex problems confronting equalization and simple solutions to address them

The Equalization program plays an important role in the fiscal arrangements that underpin Canada’s federal system. However, the program is and will continue to be beset by problems. In this report, the Mowat Centre examines the most critical of these problems: the issues of unpredictability and unequalized fiscal capacity.Read More

25
May

Examining the potential impact of a basic income on social entrepreneurs

In this report, we examine the potential impact of a basic income on social entrepreneurship. The paper presents the results of a new survey administered to 1,473 members of Toronto’s Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) as well as a focus group and several individual case study interviews.Read More

08
Feb

Boon or Bane?

The Canadian tax system is riddled with tax exemptions and preferences for many different types of income and taxpayer characteristics. These allow people to pay lower rates of tax, or no tax at all, on some types of income. Read More

04
Jan

Ontario’s Persistent Net Contribution to the Federation

Ontarians have consistently contributed more to the federal government in total tax revenue than they have received in federal spending in return. Using newly-updated StatsCan data, this report undertakes a quantitative analysis of the elements of the federal government’s revenue raising and spending practices to identify which of those elements lead to net contributions or benefits to the federation, with a particular focus on Ontario. Read More

16
Aug

Modernizing Canada’s labour market partnership

The federal government has signalled its willingness to re-evaluate the intergovernmental framework supporting active labour market policy – the programs governments provide to help unemployed Canadians get back to work. Read More